Lugovskoy maintains lead, Saurabh Anand shocks GM Mikulas

GM Lugovskoy Maxim of Russia maintained his lead with 6.5 points after the seventh round in the 11th Chennai Open International Grandmaster Chess tournament 2019 for Sakthi Group Dr N Mahalingam Trophy at Novotel IBIS OMR Hotel, Sholinganallur, Chennai.

The top board game between Grandmasters Lugovskoy Maxim and Paichadze Luka ended in a hard-fought 60 move draw. The Caro Kann game saw periodical exchange of pieces leaving them out with a king and bishop ending. The draw was agreed when they reached a position, where neither had chances.

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Bihar talent Saurabh Anand put it across Grandmaster Manik Mikulas of Slovakia keeping his International Master Norm chance alive. In an interesting Sicilian game, he came up with a nice pawn sortie that made his offside pawn a powerful and winning one. The unstoppable rook pawn coupled with loss of material, forced Mikulas to resign after 33 moves. Saurabh who came with an IM Norm performance in the recently concluded IIFL Mumbai Open, has played, thus far, four titled players and has remained undefeated.

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Sharing the second spot with 6.0 points were Paichadze Luka, Pantsulaia Levan (both Georgia), Predke Alexandr (Russia), Stupak Kirill (Belarus) and Karthik Venkataraman (India). This ten round Swiss event carries a prize fund of Rupees 15 lakhs with 55 prizes in the Open & Category sections. The final round is scheduled for Friday, 25th Jan,2019.

Pairings

Round 8 on 2019/01/23 at 10.00 am

Bo.	No.		Name	Rtg	Pts.	Result	Pts.		Name	Rtg	No.
1	9	GM	Stupak Kirill	2542	6		6½	GM	Lugovskoy Maxim	2445	20
2	5	GM	Paichadze Luka	2583	6		6	GM	Predke Alexandr	2620	1
3	2	GM	Pantsulaia Levan	2597	6		6	GM	Karthik Venkataraman	2515	12
4	3	GM	Rozum Ivan	2589	5½		5½	IM	Nguyen Van Huy	2450	18
5	17	IM	Akash G	2453	5½		5½	GM	Popov Ivan	2588	4
6	25	GM	Neelotpal Das	2419	5½		5½	GM	Aleksandrov Aleksej	2582	6
7	7	GM	Erigaisi Arjun	2548	5½		5½	IM	Girish A. Koushik	2411	28
8	10	GM	Tran Tuan Minh	2541	5½		5½	WGM	Babiy Olga	2275	43
9	83		Siddarth M	2040	5½		5½	GM	Deviatkin Andrei	2461	14
10	15	IM	Vignesh N R	2461	5½		5½		Saurabh Anand	2210	56
11	39	IM	Ameir Moheb	2309	5		5	GM	Deepan Chakkravarthy J.	2543	8
12	11	GM	Megaranto Susanto	2530	5		5	IM	Tran Minh Thang	2355	36
13	13	IM	Gajek Radoslaw	2481	5		5	IM	Saravanan V.	2318	37
14	47	IM	Deshmukh Anup	2259	5		5	IM	Khusenkhojaev Muhammad	2455	16
15	19	IM	Shyaamnikhil P	2446	5		5	IM	Konguvel Ponnuswamy	2302	41
16	21	IM	Nitin S.	2442	5		5		Pranesh M	2125	72
17	49		Sai Vishwesh.C	2250	5		5	GM	Laxman R.R.	2421	24
18	79		Bala Kannamma P	2069	5		5	GM	Czebe Attila	2418	26
19	29	IM	Rajesh V A V	2410	5		5	GM	Ziatdinov Raset	2248	50
20	31		Sahoo Utkal Ranjan	2388	5		5		Senthil Maran K	2183	61